This top-secret space passenger doesn’t have the attributes often associated with astronauts–instead of being labeled brave and resolute, this passenger has been described as nutty, sweet, and buttery. Meet Le Brouere, a space-faring wheel of cheese.

The mild French cheese Le Brouere isn’t the first of its kind to be blasted towards space, but it is the first to reach orbit and to be successfully recovered post-flight. The cheese orbited the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday. The test flight was the first ever orbital reentry and recovery mission by a commercial space company.

The block of fermented curd was a nod to one of the group’s best-known sketches, “Cheese Shop.” The wheel, described only as “very big,” was being towed back to California aboard a barge along with the spacecraft and “basking in the glow of being the first cheese to travel to orbit on a commercial spacecraft.”

The cheese was bolted to the floor of the capsule and covered with a sign warning any onlookers that the contents were “Top Secret!”

And if future space tourists are looking for something to wash down their space cheese with, they need look no further than a bottle of space beer, already on the market. Now, how do I get my hands on a chunk of that nutty-spacey goodness?

First they wanted to
fly some Limburger, but their law department
warned this might looked at as a biological weapon.

Jim Fackert

It’s a pity it wasn’t Wensleydale…. Wallace’s and Grommet’s favorite cheese.
They actually flew the first cheese in space, though it came back from the moon, not just a few orbits around the earth. )))
But SpaceX forgot the CRACKERS!!!!!!

google “a grand day out”

Matt B.

I don’t see how Le Brouere was chosen specifically based on the Monty Python sketch. I didn’t even notice it being mentioned in there. It really should have been Wensleydale, since that was the proprietor’s name, although what any of it has to do with shooting it into space, I don’t know.

Georg

“although what any of it has to do with shooting it into space, I don’t know.”

Like “Linie Aquavit” it can be sold a something special,
Name” Space Cheese”.
And: there was need for some ballast I think.
Georg

http://thecheesegoddess.blogspot.com Aura

Great to see the Monty Python skit! Who says rocket scientists don’t have a sense of humor?